Studio Secrets: From Microphone Mastery to Mixing Marvels

You are any who three Welcome. Hi the pro Audio Sueek. Thanks you guys, a professional and motivator thanks to try Booth, the best vocal booth for home or on the road voice recording and Austrian audio making. Passion Hurd introducing Robert Marshall from Source Elements and Someone Audio Post Chicago, Aaron Robert Robertson from Voodoo Radio Imaging Sidney to the Video Stars, George the Tech Whittam from LA and Me, Andrew Peters Voice Sober Talent and home studio Guy. Hey, welcome to another pro audio suite thanks to try Booth. The golden handcuffs can be released as you travel with your try booth and don't forget the code t r I p AP two hundred to get two hundred dollars off your try booth. Today we're going to be talking about well a few tips that we've learned over the years, but just the tips. That's just the tips. That's just the tips. And I probably should kick this off because I had made a discovery this week because I had a session was actually late last week come to think about, but it was a session I was doing with in the morning and in the afternoon. As I just shut down the studio, I got an email saying, oh, can you redo this line? And I thought, well, I can't be bothered firing it up again. So what I'll do is I'll use my laptop through the SSL two out of the booth because I've got to make in there that goes through there straight to the laptop, and i'd actually set it up with the four K button switched in and which mic is this again? The OC eighteen OC eighteen? Okay, got it? So I sent the file off and then I got the reply of the email saying if you changed your have you changed your settings or something? And because if you have, I like it, better continue using whatever you're using now. So what i'd realable the two things at play here. One was I've been playing around with the forty one six and the OC eight one eight because the OC eight one eight was going through the knee if the ten seventy three and the forty one six was going through the grace, and I just changed them around just for an experiment, and forgot to change them back. So he was getting the forty one six through the nieve. So it was a bit middy, yeah, full but I changed them back the next day and I said, I'll send you two files. I'll send you what you like today, and i'll send you what you historically liked before. We've gone back to using the forty one six with the grace. But having said that, the OC eighteen through the SSL two with the four K button pressed in sounds remarkably like a forty one six through the grace. They stand in for each other now that extra high end boost it's position. But the thing is, I was kind of thinking, Okay, so I see the stuff on these threads on Facebook all the time. Should I get this? Make? Should I get that? Make? What should I do? Here? Which one should I get? And it's always like, get the you know, the forty one six and a t l N one O three. My tip is an OC eighteen and then SL sell too, and then you've got both. You've got a large diaphragm without the four K button pressed in, and then you've got this hyper sort of forty one six sound with the four K button in. Yeah, it's hard to beat the versatility with that setup. And well, it's not hard to beat it, but it's hard to do it. That's simply yeah, you know, to have a single push button that essentially changes mics, you know, and then like I've just pressed that button. Now there it is with that with the with the pattern switch on the OC eighteen, you have this proximity effect changes. You know, you can change, you know, you're you're good to probably get into hypercardioid and it'd be pretty yeah for this thing. This is it. This is that the OC eighteen with the four K button pressed in, and you can hear like it's really really cutting. It does sound like a well to me, sounds close to a forty one sex. One of the problems is you get too much into the OC eight eighteen because it doesn't have the long tube. So really it's like you want to be here. But if you get away from the OC eighteen with the same distance that you would be from the forty one six and you put it in hypercardioid and pop in that four K extra you know, like mid range, high end, and yeah, you'll be you'll be getting to that cut through anything sound. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think we are so accustomed to not a flat sounding mic, right, like we the sound of voiceover is not a flat mic because we we moved away from a flat mic when we left ribbon mics. You know, it's the same with our food. Everyone wants like overly salted, yeah, spicy, spicy, Well not me, but yeah, chicken, this chicken. You guys get the hot chicken trend in Australia, it's freaking we get every yeah, hot hot hot the bag treinded. I reckon here, well probably everywhere in the around the world's air frys at the moment. If you're talking to food, isn't it surely yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fry. I don't want my air fried. Well, that's cool. So so that's your kind of I mean, you know, that's a pretty nice secret weapon. Now, wondering what you would get out of the CC eight if you did the same exact experiment, that could be interesting. I shall try that. If you wanted to have a travel solution, that's more. Yeah, but I've got the C eight with the Michael pros The C eight was sounding a lot like your OC eight one eight when it was in the porter booth, wasn't it. Yeah, in theory, and it sounded a lot like the eight, which was crazy. Yeah, you should change your name from mister big Balls. To mister Rigg. I reckon, mister, we can change that. Mister, Well that's that? Is that your tip? I reckon that should have been your tip that that car one? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And I did send that file off to a guy called Chris Gates who he's a bit of a fan of the Show's an audio engineer here in Melbourne. I love the guy, but he's always cutting you off. I couldn't believe it. Katesye that come and we need a shut the gate. The horse has bolted. Yeah, that's right, Come on, Robert, Gi give us a source connect tip. Oh shit, I was hoping you wouldn't going to give us a source connect one tip. Yeah, just avoid airports. So mine's more of a musical thing. Mine's something that musicians use a lot. And Robert was saying before, like drums is a big thing where musical mixes will use parallel compression. But the idea is that you get your voiceover set up nicely so it's nicely compressed and sounding good with a nice EQ. But then what you do is you you send that track to It can either be another track or a bus whatever way you want to work. For me, it's a bus, because I've usually got layers of voiceover, so I just send it to a bus, and on that bus you heavily compress the voiceover and you can manipulate re aqueue to whatever you want to do to get it to mix in. But the idea is that once you've got it set up and you've got that heavy compression going, you then drop that signal down, but then mix it back in so that it's just it's not there up front, but it's just making that voice over lift and it's giving it that enough kick to punch through the music and sound effects and everything else that's going on. But because that's that original signal is still fairly dynamic, you've got this other compressed one that's mixing in underneath that gives it enough punch to punch through. If that makes sense. I'm not very good at explaining. I guess I get it intellectually. I just it's one of those like it's like a tool that's always been the toolbox, but I've been afraid to open it and use it. I don't know why. I just I don't have that experience. You are doing parallel gating right now, except one of you that's true, I am mixing a mix of wet and dry, So that's essentially what I guess. That's what parallel processing is, right, pretty much some of the processing, some of them not. There's those who argue that it's kind of like almost the same thing as just getting the right settings on the compressor, and I've messed around with it and it seems like you can kind of get the same stuff. But I would say that a parallel setup is way easier to dial in, and you can and you can get like some pretty especially on drums, where like nothing ever falls too far away, but it feels like you're never squashing the top and it is just easy to get. Like I've really only used it on drums, but most compressors these days, most plugins even like the LA two a copy of this, that or the other thing. Almost every plugin manufacturer now puts a blend knob on the end of their compressors. It's so popular. So it used to be this trick you'd set up the same processing on two channels and you have to get the same latency so that they would phase perfectly. And now it's like, yeah, one NB. Well, so I mean I'm used to parallel processing quote unquote being something we use in in when we're dealing with reaver or delay, because of course you need to have dry mix only reaver. They will be insanity, right, it would be intellig unintelligible. So I'm very cave instead of be Nick Cave. Is he's super super wet, right, right? His stuff is am I right, Andrew is a Nick Cave. Oh yet make it a joke because it sounds like he's in a cave, and he sounds like he's he sounds like he's in a church. You should know you do have cave recording Roberts. Yeah. So yeah, so overly wet would be would be too much. So so that I understand. I understand the concept. And so when we're talking about processing, we either talk about what cyril cereal or parallel Is that what that the two versions of ways you treat plastically. Yeah, it's like insert or ox and return. But that's what's interesting now because a lot of insert plugins have a blend knob or a dry wet now they're really acting more like a parallel. Yeah. I don't find that quite as effective. And I Robert said that before, and I would agree with him. There's something about the blend. I think you can be more accurate with it coming from another bus. You can, and it's easier to if you've got a couple of plugins in blend mode. If it's on a separate bus, it's actually easier to you know, if you need to ride it a little bit, it's easier to do that too. I suppose it's easier to control it. Maybe it's easier to automate it's on a fader. I mean, it's nice to have it on one hundred millimeter feeter than a knob, right, I'll say that, But unless you're doing a setup where you're doing one heavy and one mild compression. But if you're doing one like the reason why I think it's less impressive on the blend because most people set the compressor to not be too heavy and then they only blend in a little of the straight. But really, if you wanted to do more obvious parallel compression, you'd put your compressor at you know, ten to one with a low threshold and crush it by twenty decibels, and then you'd only blend in like ten five percent of that compressed signal. That completely crushed signal and the majority of it would be the dry and then you'd have a natural sound with the like that benefit of like it just doesn't go down too far. Do you play around with frequencies when you're doing stuff though, because you know, like when you sort of get the stereos split and you're looking for gaps in frequencies where you can put a you know, an equed voice where it will sit and pop out, especially in radio imaging. I'll play with the EQ on that squashed parallel bus absolutely, and the parallel brus itself will just like seem like you crush it enough, it'll seem like it loses low end because that's where like a ton of the energy is. So when the signal comes in and your brain is going like, oh, I'm ready for that low one, and the compressor goes, no, you're not going to get So compressors have a can have an EQ like of fact, and I'll tell you what I can do. AP And I just finished a relaunch package for a station in Singapore called one FM, and we did a monster relaunch promo spooking that the relaunch was coming. And it's got this big operatic music happening underneath it. And I've added in, you know, lots of impacts and bushes and stuff to give it some movement and some typical FM gravitas. But what I might do is, I'll put a link in this video if you're on YouTube or in the show notes, if you're listening to the audio one, I'll put it up on our website and I'll put the full mix, and then I'll do a mix without the parallel bus AP's voice, and you'll just see how much it's still there. You can still hear it, but the parallel bust just when something impacts and hits, it's still sitting there. It's still right there in your face. That's the best way to explain it is to literally hear it. I was going to ask you if you had examples of a word they're being you, but that would be a cool idea to hear paste that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The parallel compression thing is much more kind of known in drums. I'd see then, I'm sort of It's something I haven't really talked about, and i'd do a podcast on radio imaging with the guys from Imaging Blueprint who we've had on this show before. But it's something that we never talk about, and I was kind of interested to know is it just me that does it on voice or is it you know, do many people do it out there? I mean, I don't really use it in commercial work, I suppose, unless I kind of you know, unless you get to that point where you think, shit, this needs a bit more kick. But it's certainly not on on everything, but in it I reckon. I can't think of too many imaging projects that I've done lately that I haven't used a parallel voice bus on. So yeah, if you hey in the comments, in the comments, if you have let me know. Yeah, yeah, I'm much more familiar with the concept of serial compression. In fact, I don't even know if I still have it. I wish, I hope I do. But I had this awesome compressor called the f m R Audio r NC, which stands for a really nice nice pressor well does it really? Yeah, it's like a little thought of a rag space deal and they're like two hundred bucks, but they they punch above their their weight there. I mean, those are from the early two thousands or something. Yes, yes, yes, so I used to have one of these, and I had this in my mix bus quote unquote on my I used to do production mixing on set on film sets. So this was on your stereomaster. Is that what you're saying, Yeah, I had on my stereo masters. That's a mono bus. That's a mono compressor. Did you can do stereo? It's got stereo. It's got two in, two out, two and two out and a side chain. So I would run that on my stereo bus and then I would just press super nice and what super nice does? And I think they explain it a bit a little bit. RNC achieves high performance at a low cost by using a microprocessor to replicate or replace discrete side chain components. So instead of having a lot of discrete parts, right, resistors, diodes, things that make like an LA two a amazing with chunks of software, thereby reducing the component cost. It still processes the main audio and analog, avoiding the problems associated with digital audio conversion. Even the problem of scratchy pots are avoided. No audio flows through the pots and so and basically it's using vcas internally, right. So it's this really interesting design of combining digital and analog. What does the really nice button do? So? What super nice. Did was I did some reading about this well when I first bought it, so twenty years ago. But what it did was that you're sequencing a series of compressors, so and they're all at different ratios, right, so you can hit it harder and harder and harder, and it kind of hides the coloring that you get from over compressing, you know, because its stages. Doesn't that sound like a knee? I guess it does sound like a knee. Yeah, gets you into it gradually instead of having just like a point, it curves into the compression eventually where it's like flat. It's kind of a big complicatdsing, we give you a soft knee. Yeah, And I guess talking about radio imaging again on my voice on Andrew's main voice track, if we go back to that primo that you'll hear an example of there's not one compressor, there's a sequence of plugin. So it comes in and it goes through the first one is a CLA two A, which basically just takes everything that's sort of too sort of loud, brings that down, then a bit of EQ and some other processing, but then it'll go through the Oh god, what's it called another waves compressor anyway, it goes through that, but then that's got a bit of a faster like the Renaissance compressor. Yeah, sometimes I'll use Renaissance, but the main one I use, I can see it, it doesn't matter, I'll put it in the show notes. But it's got a faster attack and a quicker release. So then that's just dealing with anything that's still a little too hot and sort of bringing that down. And then on the master bus for the voice where everything comes together, all the processing and the parallel bus and everything, there's a bus compressor on there as well, so you sort of it's the same idea by the sounds of it as what you're talking about, George, is it's not just a compressor. It's a series of compresses give you a bit more control as you're shaping that waveform. I guess yeah, because I've seen a lot of guys, a lot of guys in music, they use like a ten seventy tense at seventy six, eleven seventy six. They'll use them buzz because they both do different things right now, but they're serialized. They're one, and it's going through one and then it's going through the next So I don't know if this is still going on with mastering, but at least ten years ago, mastering engineers were starting to just clip the A to D converter just a little bit, and clippers this other thing just a little bit. And they weren't even they were just literally purposely clipping things by half a dB. And that's such a thing now that there are literally clippers. Yeah, like they were. Yeah. And also I remember the first time that I had anything mastered. So I did this recording on my cassette a track, mixed it down to DAT. I was interning it at what was it called the Classic Digital Mastering, which is one because they did a lot of classical music too. But so it's like, you know, like they did a free mastering session for this thing, and the guy loads it into Sonic Solutions. You know, he finds the peak and he's like, whatever, we're going to bump. Like I was, I hit it perfectly. I was like zero on the DAT. You know, he's like, whatever, we're going to raise it up by like three or six. I'm like you're gonna clip it. He's like that's fine. Yeah, Wow, Like there was no l one. Back then, it was just like just there's no maximizer, shave it off the top. I was running to the wall the compressor I like on IP. The second one, by the way, is the DPR four oh two, the blue one with the red led lights that sort of go vertically and you probably don't know it's in the waves Splendor. That's one of their newer ones. It's not an emulation of it's an emulation. It is an emulation of hardware because I used to have one in the studio I used to work in. Yeah, it's what's the name of that company? BB. It's not BB, but B I think it is BBE. I think you're no, it's not BB, because BB makes the excitor that's like audio crack and it ruins your max the B B still it takes your takes your daughter out on it B and then doesn't pay for the dinner. Oh god, BSS is it's BB. It's B S S. So So for a P on this, I have a sort of a bit of a fast, well reasonably fast attack and a similar release. But but if you were watching this working for AP that three dB gain reduction light would be blinking sort of you know, indiscriminately on and off. It's not working very hard, but it's just cleaning up those those things that are a bit higher, which means that as you as you work your way down the stack of compresses, you can actually compress a bit harder because there's nothing that's catching that's being compressed really hard, you know, so you sort of you're gradually leving ling it out, which means that by the time you get to a limitar, you can actually limit really hard because there's no peaks that are being caught and squashed radically. It's all sort of being just evenly squashed nicely. So that's the thought process idea. Yeah, I was gonna say, here's the setting that no one thinks about that I think can make a big difference with some of the really high end compressors like the George Massenberg. You see, every compressor probably has input, a threshold, attack, release, and output maybe, but you don't see hysteresis and a lot of compressors. Now you have to explain that. Now, what does that mean? Fuck it up? Yeah? I think it basically has to do with like having two thresholds. One threshold to trigger the compression, but the other threshold that it has to maybe follow below before it. I have to re remember this because I don't I don't own one with this direct I see this knob on plugins, I see I see certain plug ins a compressor will have a hysteresis knob. I think, logic, how do you see it? Even hysteria teresis hysteresis I've never known. I'll go with you. I'm googling it, right, and I'm like, so it happened two thresholds essentially a low threshold and a high threshold, something like a high threshold, right, I think so. I think it's something like that, because because I believe you can also have it in it might not be the same word. But with compressor with gates, you can ask it's the waste plug in that does that? Is it the MV one or something that's got a high and a low threshold. There's one that had a whole bunch of thresholds. It was kind of like what the RNC does. That was back in the day, and there was that mastering engineer from Florida that put it out. MV two is an expensive piece of hardware. I'm assuming that was a plugin. I was a plug in. Okay, tell me if this is the one you think I'm with a high and a low threshold. Well, that definitely has a high and a low level. At a low level, that's sucking it up. And that the high level expander and a compressor. Yeah, it sort of seems to be both in the one. But that's why I'm wondering whether that's what Robert's talking about. Is that what you're thinking of GML. Let's say this has become like a really deep dive on compression. It hasn't it. It has released historis. It has to do with the release timing. So here's if I was too I will find it. Let's see here I'm zoomed in too much. Okay, so how do I share my screen down the bottom? Timing release hysteresis? I notice it as a setting here and a setting there, and it has to do so maybe in here. So George Massenberg is probably one of the most renowned hardware designers, and what is that like a four thousand dollars compression? I mean everything he made is absolute. You know their money is now I want to check the sh out Crest factor Crest founder. Yeah, timing and release hisesis to precisely control dynamic features of musical performance and whatever tu familiar features such as they don't tell us what it is. They just say it's cool stuff and he doesn't really wait and never Yeah, probably does want to give you game. Don't spend four thousand dollars and buy one, Robert and then come back to us exactly. You'll expensive, yeah, expense elements. Won't mind. You just won a couple of awards. You'll be right. Well, when you were talking about me, I just wanted to show you this compressor that I probably don't understand how to use, but I've been using for fifteen years and it's the it's the dynamics plug in called a U Dynamics processor. So this is the plugin that comes on Apple. It's the Apple Place, the Apple Dynamics plugin. And the thing about this plug in is is it it doesn't have a ratio. It has a ceiling control. And I still don't understand. It's like a limit. Yeah, that's like a little limit. I think, Yeah, it's very strange. But the bottom line is when I use it, a ceiling and a threshold can be similar. But if you think of it, if you have infinity to one ratio and a threshold, and your threshold is your ceiling. Oh okay, now you confused me. But I'll believe if the ratio is infinity to one, meaning you shall not pass askold, then your threshold is the ceiling. Right. So this funny little plug in right which which I've been using for many, many years. It's got a tack release and a master output, normal normal stuff. It's got an expander with a threshold totally normal. You know, I use this. It's very hand You can do a nice gentle expander, very useful. Right, Dan, You've got the threshold for the compressor, and it has a headroom setting, not a not a ratio. And then you'll notice it's absolutely a knee what do you call it? Knee style? That's yeah, that's a knee gentle low. And as you approach, as you approach brick wall, yeah, that's right, that's brick wall right there. Right, So it's very weird. I never understand how to conceptualize the headroom number. I love this style of compress This was the way M. D. T was it. This is a great way to do compressors. Very interest is the same way M. D T. Yeah. I think md T was multiband dynamics and you got one of those curves for every single frequency band. Yeah, well they have a have they have they have a multi band version of this too, where it it's really interesting. Yeah, but considering that's a freebie, it just comes on Apple. I mean it's pretty damn good. So I it's just kind of great. There By the way, is known as a that that thing you made there with the gate and the compressor, it's known as a compander, and you'll see that on some some like the Yamaha O two I think had a compander. It was basically your gate and expander together. Yeah. So I think compandas will almost become extinct. You don't see that trouble, Yeah yeah, yeah, Yeah, that was fun, is it? Over the pro Audio Suite and Austrian Audio recorded using Source Connect, edited by Andrew Peaters and mixed by Voodoo Radio Imaging. Take support from George the Techdom. Don't forget to subscribe to the show and joining the conversation on our Facebook group to leave a comment, suggest a topic, or just say today, drop us a note at our website dot com.